


the sheer unholy fucking delight of it

by deathtosanepeople



Category: American Gods (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blow Jobs, Bottom Sweeney, First Time, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Madmoon, Outdoor Sex, Sex Magic, Sexual Content, Talking shit through, Vomiting, should just call this fic "madmoon puns" bc there's like 3 or 4, too much Irish slang by far
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-17
Updated: 2017-07-17
Packaged: 2018-12-03 13:15:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11532990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathtosanepeople/pseuds/deathtosanepeople
Summary: Wednesday, Shadow, and our resident unlucky leprechaun are finally traveling to Wisconsin. After a rough night of drinking, tormented by thoughts of his dead wife and the ones who put her in her grave, Shadow has to make an unscheduled pit stop to empty his guts on the side of the road. Sweeney follows and tries to give him some advice, and as usual, it falls through. This time however, Sweeney doesn’t mind, for Shadow wants something else from him— something Sweeney would much rather give.(Minor updates: 7/22/18)





	the sheer unholy fucking delight of it

**Author's Note:**

> First off, I would like to thank both @Largishcat and @samedifference61 for their help in editing this fic. Never in my life have I had such great betas, honestly, I probably owe them my first born for the amazing job they did. (Not that I'll ever have children. Don't really want kids. That's besides the point. I was trying to make a metaphor, and now it's gone horribly awry. They did a really, really great job is what I'm saying, in a very confusing manner.)
> 
> Secondly, I am not a native of Ireland, so if I fucked up Sweeney’s accent/slang with my dumbassery I’m so sorry. The internet was my only source of reference. If you want to look up any of the slang I used, here’s a really useful website: http://www.slang.ie/  
> Also, if there's too much of an accent- do not blame the betas, only I am to blame. Stubborn fuckwit that I am, I insisted on keeping all the accent stuff in.
> 
> Thirdly, there should be a hover translation in this fic, but if there's not, the translation is in the end notes. 
> 
> (P.s. To any who may be wondering, the vomiting in this fic is not very graphic, so if that's something that squicks you, I don't think it'll be too bad.)
> 
> Hope you all enjoy the fic, and thank you for reading!

It’s six in the morning on the fifth day of their journey to Wisconsin, there’s bloody trash country playing on the radio of the car, and Sweeney can’t, for the life of him, get comfortable in the back seat. His spine feels like it’s been cleaved straight in two by the shoddiest motel bed he’s ever slept on in his life, and between that, and the vicious, suffocating tension between his fellow passengers, Sweeney has officially labelled this ‘the road trip to hell.’  
  
He’s seriously considering throwing himself out of the moving vehicle to escape. He keeps swearing he will. _"The next time Shadow sends a not-so-covert glower in Wednesday’s direction,"_ he thinks. That's when he'll do it. Or, _"When the ancient fucken ballbag makes yet another not-so-subtle jab about Shadow’s lady love,"_ that's the time.  
  
But he stays. Stays, because he's a soft-hearted, soft-headed fool. Stays, because somebody has to watch over the hungover cunt driving the car.  
  
He peers at Shadow from under his cap, checking in on him, (not for the first time, not for the last.) He notes the shaking in Shadow's hands, the sallowness of his skin, the tired hunch of his shoulders. He looks a right fucken mess. Sweeney’s seen dead men with more color in their cheeks. Well, a dead woman. The dead wife. And it’s her, he knows, tormenting Shadow to the wee hours of the morning, with her fey form and wicked, selfish tongue. Her and the cold-blooded, heartless old tree-hanger who’d ordered her done in.  
  
It’d been this way ever since Shadow had learned what had been done to Laura. He’d become a reflection of his name, a pissed, silent shadow, doing what he was ordered and nothing more; driving, running errands, and barely sleeping. Often, he’d end up in a lonely bar at the close of their long days, sorrow and hate blended on his handsome features. He'd sit, surrounded by demons, most of them his, some of them Sweeney’s, and drink to drown the unholy world.  
  
(Sweeney doesn’t know why he bothers to join Shadow, they never speak, and sometimes Shadow even glares at him like he’ll leap from his stool and wrap his hands around Sweeney’s throat. (And if Sweeney’s cock twitches a little at the thought, that’s nobody’s business but his own.) He feels like it’s something he should do, protect Shadow from himself, give him an outlet for his rage if need be. After all, Sweeney more than deserves it.)  
  
Last night, however, had been different. Sweeney's no blushing virgin when it comes to taking a drop of the pure to get himself out of a heap of misery, but he's a little something more than human, and Shadow had imbibed enough cheap booze to make even him wince in commiseration. He'd felt something worryingly akin to concern prodding uncomfortably at the side of his ribs- Shadow won't usually go too far, even at a bar, and he’s no lightweight. But he’d gotten walloped drunk, so drunk he’d even admitted to Sweeney, (who supported his heavy-ass bloody carcass all the way back to his room), what had him so fucked.  
  
“Anniversary,” he’d slurred, hands gripping convulsively at the arms holding him up. “Marriage anniversary.” He’d laughed like it was all some hilarious joke, and perhaps it was to him. A damn cruel, unnatural joke. A god had interfered with his normal little life, causing such chaos and pain- just to get what he wanted.  
  
Sweeney had pretended not to notice the tears tracking down Shadow’s cheeks, nor the heaving of his chest as he helped him to his motel bed and sat him down. He'd escaped to the bathroom to track down some water and pills- and found himself stalling. Kept rummaging around to sound like he was looking for something. Caught himself staring at his battered face in the smudgy mirror and thinking, _"What the fuck are ye doing? What the fuck are ye doing caring about him? Wanting him?"_ He was okay with the idea of being Shadow's punching bag, the whipping boy for his mercurial moods. But to do this... to play nursemaid and confidant? He refused to admit it terrified him, the idea of being that to Shadow. Of being close to Shadow. He shouldn't fucken feel this way. Shouldn't fucken care. In the end, it hadn't mattered what he felt. For when he finally emerged to confront the devastated man, styrofoam cup and aspirin in hand, Shadow was already unconscious on top of the comforter.  
  
(He had stood there and watched Shadow breathe, listened to him snore, long after it was excusable as friendly concern.)  
  
There’s no doubt in Sweeney’s mind that after waking at such an unholy hour this morning, and last night’s foray into alcohol poisoning, the lad must feel like boiled shite. But Shadow had refused to let Sweeney drive, though Sweeney had offered, damn his traitorous gob. He shouldn't care. Doesn’t know why he does care.  
  
_Sure ye do, ye fucken bastard. Damn his dark eyes. His dark eyes an’ sinful mouth an’—_  
  
A mouth that’s now making less than attractive sounds. Grand Lord the man has the gawks. Sweeney pounds the back of Shadow’s head rest, forcing a careless tone of voice past his lips, while concern struggles to escape his throat. “Hey, pull over before ye drown us in your insides, ye contrairy fecker.”  
  
Incredibly, Shadow complies. He must be in a bad way if he’s listening to Sweeney’s request without argument.  
  
Shadow struggles with his seatbelt, fighting it as if it’s a living, breathing thing. He feels trapped, confused, suffocated by this small car and the smell of old cigars (Wednesday) and the reek of powerful alcohol (him, and probably Sweeney). He manages to free himself, falling into the door and out of the car onto the ground. His body heaves as he dry retches, his throat constricting and bile crawling up his throat.  
  
“Go into the woods and unburden yourself, my boy,” says the brim of Wednesday’s hat. “Take your time.”  
  
There’s that phrase again. Take your time. Never in a hurry this man— until he is. He briefly considers vomiting on Wednesday, but then remembers he’ll have to clean out the car, and decides against it.  
  
Shadow doesn’t know how he gets to his feet, but he does, doesn’t know how he makes it to the woods, but he manages, doesn’t remember most of heaving the contents of his stomach up his throat, but he feels the tang of vomit staining his tongue as he lies on his back in the grass and tries to regain his equilibrium.  
  
“If you’re done pukin’ your heart an' soul up, lad, there’s a nice cold coke near your head there.”  
  
Shadow’s too FUBAR’d to jump at the sudden materialization of the Irishman’s voice near him. He lifts his head a few inches off the ground to find the chipper bastard— and immediately wishes he hadn’t.  
  
Said bastard’s stark naked ass is hanging out of his pants in full view as Sweeney takes a piss against a tree. Sweeney looks back and notices Shadow’s less than quelling glare (hard to look intimidating when your head feels like a ship’s deck in the middle of a gale) and a shit eating grin tears its way across his face. “Would ye look at that,” he says cheekily, peering down at his arse like it’s the first time he’s ever seen it in his life. “I'm mooning a Moon.”  
  
Shadow groans, thunking his skull back to the ground. He fumbles around his head, trying to find the beverage, as Sweeney’s self-congratulatory guffawing surrounds them. The coke tastes like syrupy heaven after his round of lose your dinner, too sweet and a little flat, but enough to make him feel less like he’d been run over by a truck.  
  
There’s a soft _shick_ of a zipper, the crunch of boots through leaves, and then Sweeney is looming over him, casting a shadow that seems to travel way beyond his actual height. “It’d be better if ye could take a swim in the Atlantic, or even better yet, have a full Irish breakfast. Nothin’ like an Irish breakfast to take the edge off of a hangover.”  
  
Shadow groans again, the thought of food making his stomach churn in protest. Apparently Sweeney notices, damn the fucking son of a bitch.  
  
“Aye,” he continues sagely, a gleeful note to his voice, “an Irish breakfast. The full hog with rasher, sausages, black an’ white pudding, mushrooms, fried tomatoes, fried eggs, soda bread, baked beans an’ lashings of tea.”  
  
Shadow hisses his objection to the topic of conversation through his tightly clenched teeth. His hands clutch around his middle, as if that can stop the rebellious surging of his guts. “I hate you,” he grits out, glaring at the leprechaun through slitted eyes.  
  
Before today those words would have smarted with the sting of truth, but after last night, it feels as if they can be as light as a jest. So, Sweeney just shrugs, sliding down a nearby tree, stretching his trunk like legs in front of him. “Love me or hate me lad, just so long as ye don’t ignore me.” The mirth snuffs out of his face as quickly as an extinguished flame. “That’s what kills your man.”  
  
Shadow sometimes feels as if he’ll get whiplash trying to keep up with the Irishman’s volatile moods. They’re as changeable as the wind at sea. “You’re kind of impossible to ignore,” he offers, an obvious attempt at placation.  
  
“An’ yet,” the Irishman says, his face suffused with a melancholy longing, “so many do.”  
  
Shadow grunts his displeasure, haphazardly raising himself to a seated position, feeling like the inside of his head is about to slop out of his ears. “You don’t seem like the type to wallow in pity,” he observes.  
  
Sweeney’s eyebrows hover judgmentally halfway up his brow. “Now isn’t _that_ the pot calling the kettle black.”  
  
Shadow swallows, giving a sharp nod, which he immediately regrets. He presses a steadying palm to his tortured skull. “Fair enough.” He pauses for a second, looking as if he’ll lapse into silence but then… “No, you know what? Fuck you. Fuck you Mad Sweeney, because you are the last person on earth who should be giving me advice on what I’m feeling after what you’ve done.”  
  
Sweeney’s temper rises, goaded on by guilt- and a resentment he buries in the growing graveyard he keeps in his heart, every headstone exhibiting something Shadow has made him feel. He feigns nonchalance, leaning back and closing his eyes. “Think of it as me doin’ ye a favor. If I hadn’t run your cheating wife and her lover off the road, you’d never have known your blushing bride was a whore.”  
  
“Fucks sake, Sweeney,” Shadow curses, trying, and failing, to get to his feet. “That’s so messed up. She was my fucking wife. Is my fucking wife. I don’t know. I’d never want her dead, no matter what she’d done.” He gives up on trying to rise, slumping again into the crackling, dry grass below. “I would get up and hit you but I just… can’t right now.”  
  
Sweeney nods obligingly. “Rain check, then.”  
  
“Do you know you haven’t even apologized to me, or Laura?” Shadow’s voice is purposefully harsh, resentful, accusatory.  
  
Sweeney doesn’t even bat an eyelash. “Aye. I know.”  
  
“Why? Do you not care? Do you feel any kind of remorse in that sociopathic red head of yours?”  
  
“I just figured you’d kill me,” Sweeney replies, and it’s startling how it sounds like a statement of fact, like something that should have happened, still could happen, something that is inevitable. “Probably could, the state I’m in.” He cracks open one curious eye. “Why didn’t ye, while we’re on the subject?”  
  
Shadow rolls his shoulders, straightens his cuffs, and generally looks anywhere but at Sweeney before he responds. “I may be an ex-con, and I may have a penchant for violence that has thrown me into more than one unfortunate situation— but I am not a murderer, Sweeney. And I don’t ever want to be one. It’s one thing to play Robin Hood, steal from the rich and give to the poor-” He chuckles humorlessly. “The poor in this scenario being me- it’s another thing entirely to take a life. I won’t lie and say that I didn’t think about it, but Laura said you tried to help her. Tried to… I don’t know. Atone or some shit like that. So, I decided it wasn’t worth it.” A vein of steel trickles into Shadow’s voice. “And let’s be honest, this is mostly Wednesday’s doing.”  
  
“But you’re still workin’ for him.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
Shadow’s eyes narrow, his lips pursing with anger. “That’s between me and him.”  
  
Sweeney lets that hover in the air, not daring to touch it, to pry. But then that blasted conscience of his drags itself into being- wobbling and weaving like a battered old tomcat who'd lived through too many tussles, but was altogether too stubborn to back down. “I’ll drown ye one of these days, ye useless pox,” Sweeney mutters darkly. To Shadow he says; “Would it help then, if I were to apologize?”  
  
The black look Shadow gives Sweeney could daunt even Balor of the Evil Eye. “You don’t apologize to someone because you think it’ll fucking help you, Sweeney, you apologize because it’s the right fucking thing to do, a thing that proves you have some fucking concept of regret.”  
  
Sweeney’s fingers drum on his thigh, his lips thin to lines, his eyes focused on the sun withered branches above them. Finally, in a scratchy, carefully modulated tone he says; “I’m sorry then, Shadow. I’m sorry I had any part in your wife’s death, I’m sorry she’s the bloody livin’ dead now, I’m sorry I ever listened to Wednesday in the first place, I’m sorry I didn’t try harder to keep ye away from him. I’m even sorry to your bitch of a dead wife, because meself be damned I’ve grown to like her, and she didn’t deserve to go the way she did.” He locks eyes with Shadow, a searing earnestness branding his face. “And I’m most of all sorry for fucken ye over, because you’re a good man, and ye don’t deserve this hand you’ve been dealt.”  
  
Shadow has to look away, unsettled by the intensity of Sweeney’s confession. He hadn’t been expecting that, hadn’t been expecting the Irishman to apologize at all, if he’s honest. “I… thank you, I guess. That was…” He swallows. “Thanks.”  
  
Sweeney grunts in acknowledgment, and lets his eyes fall shut once more. He seems less hunched, more loose, as if massive weight has been lifted off his shoulders.  
  
The quiet noise of the forest takes the place of conversation, the brush of wind through the dead leaves, the occasional polite creak of a tree. Bugs hum their way through the sunlight, and birds chatter to their fellow feathered friends.  
  
It should be calming, tranquil, but Shadow just feels hollow and dull. He envies Sweeney the ease in his face, the relaxation in his splayed limbs— he looks, if not content, unwound and placid in a way Shadow has never seen. He has the strange thought that Sweeney looks more at home here than he did in the bar, or any other dingy place you’d expect to see the likes of the wild Irishman.  
  
Sweeney can feel those soulful eyes focused on himself, and it makes something warm and pleasant spread  throughout his chest and down. He risks a peek through sun warmed lids, disappointed that Shadow’s ever present grim look hasn’t faded. If anything, it’s stronger, and Sweeney supposes that while silence may be a boon to some, it’s not a friend to his companion.  
  
_Damn that dead struggle an’ strife cunt. Damn meself and all that I’ve done._  
  
There’s a tune resting in his chest, and tickling at the back of his throat. Before he can give much thought to why he’s doing it, he lets the song start rumbling from his mouth. It's a deep brogue, is his voice when he sings, and he’s no Ronnie Drew, but he can hold a tune if it suits himself.  
  
_“Cold blows the wind oer my true-love,_  
_And gently drops the rain;_  
_I never had but one true-love,_  
_And in cold grave she was lain._  
  
_“I’ll do as much for my true-love_  
_As in my power doth lay;_  
_I’ll sit and mourn all oer her grave_  
_For a twelvemonth and a day.”_  
  
Aye, now that had gotten the lad’s attention. Not a good sort of attention though, Shadow’s looking at him as if he were a trick performing monkey.  
  
“What the fuck… are you singing,” Shadow deadpans.  
  
“Old folk song,” he replies lazily, his honey green eyes following the meandering path of a large beetle through the grass. “Goes all the way back to the fourteen hundreds, I believe. Known by the pleasant name of; _Unquiet Grave_.”  
  
Shadow doesn’t respond, that heavy gaze wandering away from him, and fuck if Sweeney doesn’t miss its weight. He continues his goading, though he knows he shouldn’t. He’s a right hypocrite for speaking on this after what he’s done, after being the whole bloody reason Shadow is in this fucken mess in the first place. But he needs to hear this, he does. Somebody has to get through to him, and Sweeney doubts bloody Wednesday will try. It’s gotta be him. “Do ye want to know what it means?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Alright.” Sweeney nods in agreement. “Then I’ll tell ye.”  
  
Shadow’s entire body seems to sag a little closer to the earth. “Jesus.”  
  
“A man’s love,” Sweeney begins, “his true love, his only love, dies, and leaves him behind. So he sits at her grave an’ he mourns for a whole year and a day. An’ at the end of that year an’ day, the dead love comes up from the grave an’ she asks; ‘What fecker is up here moaning away, disturbing my peaceful rest?’” Sweeney growls, displeasure marring his mouth. “Ungrateful cunt. Her man was there, a whole year, mourning over her, an’ she doesn’t give a damn. She doesn’t know how much he’s hung up on her, how she’s tearing him apart. Doesn’t care, neither. Selfish cunt.”  
  
Shadow’s fists are tightening, the fog in his head slowly being burned away by a waking rage that seems to slumber in his head. A rage just waiting for someone to fuck up and mention Laura. Sweeney continues on, unawares, or at least uncaring.  
  
“But then that poor bastard, he asks her; ‘Can I have one more kiss? Can I hold ye one more time in my arms? Be with ye, one last time, the way we used to be, before I lose ye forever?’ And the dead love says:  
  
_“My lips are cold as clay my love,_  
_And my breath is earthy strong,_  
_One kiss from my lily-white lips_  
_And your time would not be long.”_  
  
“Now, I don’t know if that part means that if he was to kiss his lover that’d he’d instantly be dead himself, or if it means that the one kiss would never let him go. Perhaps the kiss would gradually drive him mad, until he wasted away, an’ became just as dead as she was. In that case, he’d die slow, and painful, and miserable.”  
  
There’s a pain radiating out from Shadow’s jaw from clenching his teeth so hard. He doesn’t want to fight again, he doesn’t want to give Sweeney the satisfaction of knowing that he’s getting to him. But he balks at the idea of the Irishman knowing his inner thoughts, guessing at his nightmares, poking at his pain. How could he know what Shadow saw in formaldehyde soaked dreams, felt against his lips in the darkness, cold and lily-white and breathing soil? He barely refrains from bringing up a hand to press to his mouth, fearing his lips will be as chilled as the ones that had left their imprint upon him.  
  
“Ye know the one good thing the dead wife from the song did, that your dead wife will never do?”  
  
Shadow’s gaze jerks to Sweeney’s, and then holds there, the promise of violence licking at the corners of his corneas, retribution telegraphed in every line of his stiff form.  
  
“She let her man go.”  
  
Shadow reels as if struck, all the fight bleeding out of him in one sweeping wave, leaving him bereft and drowning without his all too familiar fury.  
  
Sweeney continues the song, that Irish lilt in his voice giving his rough syllables an almost pretty sound, the solemn expression in his eyes turning the desolate love song haunting.  
  
_“’T is down in yonder garden green,_  
_Love, where we used to walk,_  
_The finest flower that e’re was seen_  
_Is withered to a stalk._  
  
_“The stalk is withered dry, my love,_  
_So will our hearts decay;_  
_So make yourself content, my love,_  
_Till God calls you away.”_  
  
He finishes, the last notes petering out into the blue sky above, and when he speaks again, his voice is soft, almost soothing. “She’s telling him to live, Shadow. She’s telling him that if he dies with her, both their hearts will rot an’ decay. You’re not doing yourself any favors, mooning over her, Shadow Moon. If she stopped caring more about herself than ye for a single second, she’d see that. She’d tell ye to let her go. To live.”  
  
Shadow doesn’t need this, the fucking lecture. Everyone seems to be telling him to live, live, live. But it’s nearly impossible to desire to live, when you can’t remember what it’s like to want to be alive.  
  
“Ye remember how to live, right, Shadow? Because I think you’ve forgotten. Ye haven’t let yourself do anything but survive for years. I saw it back there in the bar, when ye fought me,” Sweeney’s eyes go distant, searching back to the night they met, and Shadow swears he can see the Irishman’s breath pick up. “I saw what ye could look like when you’re living— eyes blazing, fist flying, ye were burning with it, _life._ ”  
  
Sweeney is right, the perceptive asshole. The truth is, Shadow doesn’t remember. He can’t remember something he’s never experienced. It feels as if he’s spent his whole life coasting, waiting for the good times to begin, for life to feel like living.  
  
“Don’t ye know that’s why I like to rile ye?” Sweeney is laying his voice low and thick, rumbling with barely hidden yen. “I want to see that again, that fury that makes ye come alive. I felt as if I’d shiver away to cinders laying under your weight that night, as your ignited molasses eyes dripped soft sweetness into my awaiting sight.”  
  
Shadow jerks in surprise, the odd, romantic description startling him from his misery. “Are you fucking drunk?”  
  
Sweeney merely grins at him, unabashed and cheeky. “Only on the countryside. I always get a wee bit poetic out in nature. Reminds me of dear old Erin’s Isle.” His gaze wanders out among the trees, as if he can find something of his home in this very forest. “Reminds me of when _I_ was more alive.” He rolls his head against the tree, letting his eyes fall back on Shadow. “Maybe we could help each other with that.”  
  
Shadow doesn't let himself consider Sweeney could mean, doesn’t let himself process why part of him craves the suggestion. Sweeney is looking at him sure and steady on, and Shadow feels cornered by the gaze, even in this wide open space. Their staring competition is broken by a gentle rustle in the grass that comes steadily closer, and stops at Sweeney’s feet. A tiny squirrel pops up its head, nose twitching, paws high, tail swishing behind it, looking expectantly at the leprechaun.  
  
“‘elo little miss. Have ye come for a snack?” The squirrel seems to cock its head and listen as Sweeney speaks. “You’ve got a good nose, ye do.” He pulls out of one of his giant pockets a packet of peanuts, the likes of which you’d get on a plane flight. He rips open the plastic and pours the nuts into his palm. The squirrel, with barely a second of hesitation, scampers up his bent knee to reach the proffered hand.  
  
Shadow doesn’t know why, and he probably never will, but this is the thing that breaks him. It begins as a low laugh, deep in his chest, and spreads to the rest of his body until he’s shaking, and shaking, and his eyes are blurring and he can’t breathe. His head is filled with cotton and his throat is clogged with tears and he’s choking out sobs. It’s all so ridiculous, so crazy. He’s just a man. He wasn’t meant to be in this world of gods and monsters and crazy leprechauns who feed fucking wood animals from their palms like fucking Snow White. He’s just a man and all he wanted to do was come home to his living wife and not have to grieve, and then have his grief turned to rage, to hope, to hopelessness, then back to grief again. How can he forget her? How can he let go? How can he—  
  
His tumbling thoughts are put to a halt as a broad palm descends upon his shoulder. “That’s right lad, let it all out. It’s good for ye. We all need a cleansing cry sometimes to clear out all the muck.”  
  
Shadow raises his head, sees Sweeney crouching beside him, an alien compassion etched into the lines of his face. Shadow moves to wrest the Irishman’s hand from him, but stops, his fingers curling round the man’s wrist.  
  
_“Maybe we could help each other with that.”_  
  
He looks at Sweeney’s face, the blooming bruises that leave his cheekbones a constant swirl of blues, purples, yellows, greens. Sees the lines of red in tired hazel eyes, the rusty crusted cuts in his skin. Feels the heat coming off the hand on his shoulder, the wiry hair on the wrist he holds. Smells the alcohol soaked breath ghosting near his face, hard whiskey, with fruit and spice giving it a tantalizing bite, a hint of nicotine mixing through it all. Acknowledges how very fucking alive Sweeney is. Listens to that sentence roll through his head again and again.  
  
He presses forward, clacking their teeth together, curling his other hand at the back of Sweeney’s head, diving his tongue into that infuriating, taunting mouth. He pulls back when he doesn’t feel a response, feeling foolish and cheated and a number of other irrational emotions. He expects to find violence in the leprechaun’s eyes, that same wild joy that came during their fight.  
  
Instead he finds something unnervingly close to awe.  
  
“Fuck me blind,” Sweeney breathes, and leans down, down, catching Shadow’s lips, rough and demanding, giving no quarter.  
  
“Literally, or figuratively?” Shadow takes time to mutter, overwhelmed by Sweeney’s crowding closeness, how large the Irishman seems kneeling over him.  
  
Bewilderingly, Sweeney seems to sense his discomfort. He grabs Shadow by the shoulders, and brings him down over him as he flops onto his back, leaving Shadow hovering between his legs, supported by his palms and knees. He has a wicked grin on his face, and Shadow can’t help but be thrown by the transformation.  
  
“I know I’m a good looking bloke, lad, but are ye going to stare all day, or are ye going to get down to business?”  
  
Shadow shakes himself from thought and lowers onto the Irishman’s broad chest, taking his time licking into Sweeney’s mouth. He wants the sharp taste of whiskey, wants the vile taste of cigarette smoke, wants the warmth and the wetness, everything that his last kiss was not.  
  
Sweeney obliges beautifully, his technique sloppy, hurried, flattering in its eagerness. His caresses are rough, his teeth too involved in his kissing, his breathing heavy and loud. He’s constantly in motion, unable to keep his hands in one position for too long, shifting his body every few seconds, already rutting upwards, their jeans chafing together. It’s wrong, it’s so wrong, Sweeney’s a madman, a killer, a liar— and Shadow unequivocally dislikes him. But this embrace is overwhelming Shadow’s senses, muffling his thoughts, blocking out the world, and it’s what he needs.  
  
_It’s bloody fucken glorious,_ Sweeney thinks, _the way Shadow has himself trapped beneath him._ Sweeney revels in the long, trim body laid line to line with his own, in the delectable scent about Shadow’s neck and ironed into his shirt. He inhales it, filling his lungs with the fragrance, citrus aftershave and sandalwood lotion. There’s a dark, exquisite cologne that reminds him of whiskey long stored in oaken barrels, laden with toffee, or caramel, or perhaps cocoa.  
  
As they grind together, sucking skin, and laving at collarbones, and nipping at each other’s lips, Sweeney is muttering to himself in Gaelic. It’s interspersed with the occasional “atta boy” or “c’mon, c’mon, there’s a good lad,” and Shadow really should have seen that coming. “Are you incapable of being quiet for even a moment?”  
  
“Maybe if ye were doing a proper job of this I wouldn’t have enough sense in my head left to talk shite.”  
  
And it’s stupid, but suddenly Shadow is unsure, off kilter. He hasn’t touched or been touched in so long, and he’s dizzy with sensations that would have been but light distractions before. It’s been _so long._  
  
But before he can follow that train of thought any farther, he again has the uncanny sensation of Mad Sweeney seeming to read his mind. The Irishman lets out a disgruntled huff, surging upwards, moving Shadow as if he weighs nothing, aligning their bodies in a sitting position, determinedly seeking the thrust of Shadow’s cock. “Don’t be such a girl’s blouse,” he grouses, “I was only codding ye.”  
  
Shadow stares at Sweeney, lips slack and eyes glassy with befuddled desire. “You’re being sweet to me,” he accuses, his voice laden with disbelief. “Why are you being sweet to me?”  
  
“Ask me no questions, I’ll tell ye no lies,” Sweeney replies, and there’s such a sad, damaged look of remorse to his face that Shadow shuts the fuck up immediately and leaves it alone. He doesn’t want to deal with any self-reproach on either side, and maybe that’s selfish, but he just wants to feel pleasure and desire and not think.  
  
Shadow’s question had sent a fresh wash of misery and guilt cascading over Sweeney, and maybe it’s because his cock has gone soft with shame, or perhaps it’s that he doesn’t want Shadow to think that it’s because of him that his enjoyment has waned, or maybe he just fucken wants to get his mouth on Shadow’s dick, but he throws Shadow onto his back and attacks his pants with a vengeance.  
  
“What are you—“ Shadow starts, but Sweeney cuts him off with a firm hand around his throat, not enough to choke, but none too gentle either. He’s pleasantly surprised when Shadow can’t subdue a gasping moan. He wants to stomp to death the pieces of his heart and mind that are taking notes, whispering in his head about remembering this or that for next time. Next time, as if there’ll be a fucken next time.  
  
When he finally gets Shadow in his mouth, he wastes no time fucking around, gorging his throat, swallowing him rough and dirty. Shadow bucks up involuntarily, letting out a cry of surprise, making Sweeney gag as Shadow thrusts too deep too fast.    
  
“Sorry, sorry,” Shadow pants, holding his shuddering hips as steady as he can. Sweeney waves him off, adjusting himself, relishing the slick, satin slide of the head of Shadow’s cock on the roof of his mouth. He goes down Shadow’s length with a few forceful bobs, a viciousness in how he hollows his cheeks, a desperation in his long draws up the shaft. He prompts Shadow’s hips, letting him fuck his mouth, till he can feel liquid gathering at the corners of his eyes, feel spit dribbling down his chin and wetting his beard, feel the burn in his throat as he fights not to choke, or breathe through anywhere but his nose.  
  
Through it all, Shadow holds his head, fingers threading lightly in his hair, never tugging, always careful, sometimes moving down to caress his neck. The consideration leaves Sweeney feeling broken and vile, knowing he doesn’t deserve it, urging him to keep up this violent, punishing pace, to tear his lying, bastard throat raw. He detests himself for wanting this, for getting hard from _just_ this, and isn’t that mad as a box of frogs.  
  
Shadow tries to slow him a few times, but Sweeney won’t have it, keeping up his relentless rhythm. Between the whiplash rate and the fact that Shadow hasn’t had his cock sucked for years, he knows this will be a short affair. He tries to take in every impossible detail before it’s over; the glint of summer sun on Sweeney’s copper-gold hair, the drag of his ruddy, flushed lips over Shadow’s dark cock, the desperate clenching and unclenching of his finger-span against Shadow’s thighs.  
  
He hates himself for enjoying this, feels betrayal lurking in his veins, but he wants this. He _needs_ it. It’s brutal and clumsy and the noises Sweeney makes are disgustingly obscene, but Shadow doesn’t give a shit because it’s so good, so fervent, so fucking forceful, that he feels his orgasm being dragged from his core, fast and powerful, before he can even give Sweeney a warning. The Irishman takes it in stride, wincing a little at the taste, an expression so petulant Shadow has to swallow a laugh. Sweeney doesn’t release Shadow's cock until he's has shuddered through every last aftershock, to the point where Shadow has to push Sweeney away from his hypersensitive member.  
  
Sweeney thumps bodily onto the ground next to Shadow, heaving like a steam engine. His entire face is soaked in spit, his beard sporting obvious white spatters. They lay quietly on the forest floor, trying to catch their breath, their faces tilted towards each other, and as Sweeney’s eyes track over him again and again, it occurs to Shadow that the Irishman seems to be memorizing his features.  
  
“Take a picture, it’ll last longer,” he offers lazily, and then smothers another laugh as the leprechaun’s cheeks go rosy pink. “Really? After everything you just did, that’s what makes you blush?”  
  
Sweeney throws an arm over his face, hiding it away. “Shut the fucken hell up, ye daft muppet,” he rasps, his voice completely wrecked.  
  
Shadow does laugh then, and it’s a satisfied, pleasing thing. He feels good, boneless, pleasantly sleepy, calm in a way he hasn’t felt for weeks. Propping himself up on his side, he reaches over to return the favor, fingers seeking the button on Sweeney’s jeans. He doesn’t expect the halting hand that encircles his forearm, nor does he expect the scraping sentence that follows. “Ye don’t have to do that,” Sweeney says into his elbow.  
  
“I know,” he responds patiently.  
  
Sweeney hesitates for a second, and then with a curse, lets Shadow go. “Tá mé ar aon bastaird maith agus ní féidir liom dul do lámha íon ar dom.”  
  
Shadow raises his brows. “Whatever you say, Sweeney.” He undoes the button on Sweeney’s pants, noting how even that has elicited a small response, the dive of Sweeney’s abdomen under his shirt. Shadow smooths back the layers, revealing the pale taunt stomach beneath, and traces his fingers over the shuddering expanse. The writhing reaction begins immediately, more curses passing Sweeney’s lips, that increase in volume and rapidity the lower Shadow goes.  
  
“I'm barely touching you,” Shadow observes, perhaps a bit smugly.  
  
“I’m sensitive, ye manky gobshite,” Sweeney groans, the sound muffled by the sleeve still over his face. He slaps Shadow’s wandering hand away.  
  
That confession strikes Shadow as hilarious. This foul-mouthed giant of a man, sensitive? He’d say that pigs would sooner fly, but the way the last couple of weeks had been going, who was he to say they didn’t? Instead he asks, “Sensitive just there? Or everywhere?”  
  
“I wouldn’t tell ye if ye had a wee ol’ Granny at gunpoint,” Sweeney bites back, putting a protective arm around his middle.  
  
So, Shadow moves up, and does something he hasn’t done for a long time. He starts at the crook of Sweeney’s neck, alternating nips and tongue filled open-mouth kisses. He is rewarded by a ridiculous amount of heavy breathing from Sweeney, who sounds like he’s barely keeping his composure. Shadow moves down to the collarbone, laving tongue and teeth on the thin skin, sending Sweeney’s hips canting up, breaths cut short behind grinding teeth. He follows the column of Sweeney’s throat, sucking lightly, and when he comes back down he halts, right at the juncture where neck meets shoulder, tightly capturing it in his mouth and drawing in deep draughts, as if he were trying to take the life blood from Sweeney’s body.  
  
“Fucken hickeys!” Sweeney explodes, sounding like he’s about to implode. From anger, or from pleasure, Shadow can’t tell. “What are ye? A fucken twelve year old girl?”  
  
“Shut up,” Shadow growls, and is shocked when Sweeney actually does. Refocusing his attention on Sweeney’s neck, he lets himself enjoy it to the fullest. He explores every inch, sucking till it has to be painful, all the while sliding his hand into Sweeney’s jeans and palming his cock. “Of course you don’t wear underwear,” he mutters, biting with a little more force than necessary when Sweeney begins to open his mouth to respond.  
  
He hadn’t given hickeys since gods know when; Laura had never let him, said it was a highschool thing better left in highschool. He supposes she was right, but he’d never quite stopped loving the feeling of giving hickeys and getting them. There was something about being entangled with someone as close as you could, and using your mouth to draw even closer. As if you could bring them into your very veins if you just breathed them in hard enough.  
  
Sweeney knows he’s dead and gone and that Shadow really did kill him because there is no way in hell Shadow fucken Moon is marking hickeys on his neck and teasing his flesh with his beautiful hands. He pulls his arm away from his face when Shadow suddenly halts, and Sweeney is blessed with the brain shattering image of Shadow licking a wet, spit soaked stripe down his own hand, while maintaining unwavering eye contact.  
  
“Jesus come down off the cross an’ let me up.” Sweeney drops his head back, thinking of every disgusting time he’d seen Wednesday seduce some poor young thing. He prays to every friendly god he knows of that he won’t arrive before he has a few more moments to savor this. He’s barely through the A’s on his list when Shadow’s slicked hand wraps around his shaft, his mouth descending back onto Sweeney’s neck, and Sweeney’s lucky if he remembers his _own_ name after that.  
  
There’s always been a certain finesse to this handjob stuff that Shadow had never quite gotten. Every man was different of course, but they all wanted a specific kind of stroke or rhythm or friction, and he never could completely ace it. But Sweeney… sensitive he’d said. Apparently that applied to his dick as well. Shadow tries dragging the tips of his fingers up Sweeney’s length. He focuses purely on the head. He twists from tip to base and back down again. Anything and everything is met with equal response and fervor, and the Irishman begins to become undone. Sweeney’s throat moves under Shadow’s mouth, prattling desperate nonsense, his hands white knuckling at his sides, digging his nails in the fresh, cool earth. “Jesus fucken shite— faster ye fuck, faster. Oh, the holy hands, ah fuck, ah don’t stop Shadow—“  
  
Sweeney’s voice descends into a repeated, urgent invocation of Shadow’s name as he loses himself in his orgasm, and Shadow raises his head, keen despite himself to watch Sweeney come apart. The man’s eyes are unfocused, his hair a damp, dark red against his forehead, his body arcing off the ground. There’s a tightness to his jaw, his brow a twisted stroke, his crow’s feet pronounced around his eyes. The collar of hickeys Shadow had left behind are garish and dark on Sweeney's milky, trembling throat, all those scarlets and purples and blues underneath the skin, like so many bloody poppies. It’s an arresting sight, and Shadow finds himself rubbing soothing circles into Sweeney’s chest until he comes down from the high.  
  
Sweeney can’t remember the last time he felt this fuckin’ good. His head is floating in the clouds, his veins are singing like a brook, his body tingling in time with the heartbeat of the earth—  
  
“What the fuck.”  
  
Begging the gods quietly, Sweeney screws his eyes shut, and keeps a death grip on the hand Shadow had rested on his chest. “Quiet,” he grumbles. “Stall the ball, ye gom. Let me rest for a bloody moment.”  
  
“Sweeney, seriously what the fuck.”  
  
With an incredibly put upon sigh, he opens his eyes and looks over at Shadow. “What’s so important that ye can’t wait a few seconds?”  
  
Shadow gestures about them with the look of a man who has quite literally been pulled to the end of his rope.  
  
Sweeney balks. Spreading out around them, replacing the brown leaves and sparse yellowing grass, is a blanket of green, starting thickest in a circle around them, and strewn out for about forty feet.  
  
Clovers.  
  
A whole fucken field of clovers that wasn’t there before.  
  
He reaches out, picks one, two, three, four, five— all of them have four leaves. Every single one a four-leafed clover. Sweeney groans.  
  
“Did you do this?” Shadow asks, in an overly calm tone.  
  
“Aye,” Sweeney sighs.  
  
“On accident?”  
  
“Aye.”  
  
“How?”  
  
Sweeney casts his gaze away, his jaw working. “It happens sometimes, with sex, like this. Sex can be a type of worship. Some gods, creatures, they live off of it entirely. I’m not made for that o’ course, but it can still affect me. Worship, belief, it’s what keeps us alive. Sex for me is like… one of those toxic American inventions, the energy drink. Shoots me straight up full of vim an’ vigor.”  
  
Shadow brings up a hand and brushes it down the side of Sweeney’s face. “The bruises, the cuts, they’re gone too.”  
  
“Not surprised.”  
  
“So… anytime a god or creature of myth gets it on, it’s like chugging a red bull.”  
  
Sweeney winces. “Not quite.”  
  
“Explain.”  
  
The Irishman turns on his side to face Shadow, and spreads his hands almost defensively. “It has to be worship. It can’t be just a regular fuck. If it were that easy, don’t ye think I’d be having a one night stand every night of the week?” Sweeney shakes his head. “No, it has to be between two people with some small bit of feeling for it to work. Ye have to genuinely give a shit whether the other person lives or dies. The more powerful the feeling, the stronger the worship, the bigger the surge of power.”  
  
Shadow massages his temples, drawing in a slow, steadying breath. “Okay. Fine. Let’s say I believe you. Even if it’s not as easy as just finding a random stranger to sleep with, you could still find someone every once in awhile who’d care enough.”  
  
Sweeney’s grin is brilliant and conceited. “Oh, aye ye think so? Think that highly of me do ye, bright eyes?”  
  
Shadow scowls, and doesn’t take the bait. “Couldn’t you?”  
  
Sweeney gives an offended huff. “Yes, but it’s not usually worth it. Not enough juice from a single, regular human.”  
  
“But… I’m—“  
  
Sweeney interrupts before Shadow can finish, pointing his Roman nose to the sky. “Ye notice that the earth’s not the only thing that’s changed? Localized storm right overhead. Was sunny a few moments ago.”  
  
Shadow looks to the now cloudy sky, the angry cumulus beasts darkening overhead, causing a black circle above them, but blue sky all around. It’s his turn to groan.  
  
“Done this before, have ye?”  
  
“Yeah. It was snow, before.”  
  
Sweeney nods sagely. “Aye. I’d say you’re the furthest thing from a regular bloke. Feel all tingly, like electricity is running down your skin? Like ye could fight a hundred men an’ then run a marathon an’ wrestle a bull an’ never stop?”  
  
“Pretty much, yeah.”  
  
“Ye got a boost too.”  
  
“From you?”  
  
Sweeney’s tongue slides over his lips, a nervous tic. “From us, lad.”  
  
“Jesus.”  
  
“Aye.”  
  
There’s a lengthening quiet between them that stretches and pulls taut with every passing second. Sweeney swears he can feel every hair on his arm crackling with electricity, lying this close to Shadow, can taste rain on the air, and it reminds him of Shadow’s mouth, can feel the energy they’ve exchanged and produced gathering under them, amassing, swelling, buoying them up.  
  
Those hickory eyes slide to his, that shining glint that lives in them, whether light be present or not, has taken on a daring gleam, and who is Sweeney to refuse?  
  
“Ye want to go again?”  
  
“Fuck. Yes.”  
  
He pulls Shadow into his arms, tasting the ozone in his kiss, feeling the storm in his touch, and though any normal man would be cowed by handling the Moon in his hands, Mad Sweeney is simply entranced by the sheer unholy fucking delight of it.

**Author's Note:**

> “Tá mé ar aon bastaird maith agus ní féidir liom dul do lámha íon ar dom.” = "I’m a no good bastard and I don't deserve your pure hands on me." (This, of course, was done by google translate so who fucken has any idea if it's actually accurate. Not me, that's for sure.)
> 
> Another side note, the song used within this fic has many variations, and this one is an amalgamation of several versions, which you can see here: http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/child/ch078.htm
> 
> If you want to come yell with me on tumblr about Madmoon, or send me prompts for this ship, I'm katieamnesiaandrews. Come join me in the trash heap brethren


End file.
